National Lab For Social System Innovation
My new partners / clients / co-conspirators at nuPOLIS are up to some awesome work in the field of social innovation. If you haven’t heard about them yet, please go take a look.
nuPOLIS is a blog and info repository for the work of a network of some of the most impactful and influential innovators in social systems — from poor schools to urban sustainability, immigration to workforce development, and much more — who advise leaders in government, foundations and NGOs.
They recently developed an outline of how to build a national network of labs devoted to R&D in social systems, modeled on the corporate R&D system. This work evolved into a recommendation they sent to the Obama administration’s transition team at the Department of Labor, and bears some attention from those of you active in developing innovative social solutions.
This excerpt really delivers the essence of the concept:
In contrast [to the corporate model of R&D], the process for developing social innovations is far more fragmented, less disciplined, slower, and lacks clear financial incentives. Except in exceptional situations, social entrepreneurs are isolated from each other and the means for scaling up ideas; are undercapitalized; have weak due diligence and market-testing processes; have weak connections to private businesses and markets; and depend substantially on the philanthropic sector’s idiosyncratic and relatively small “capital markets.”
With only some modest exceptions, the social sector lacks a robust applied R&D function. Design, development, and prototyping work is either done by “think-tank” oriented enterprises that lack practical connection to the field; by individual social entrepreneurs who lack access to a historical knowledge in the field; or by poorly capitalized NGOs that lack the technical discipline or resources needed to do the development well, and whose funding drivers too often create incentives to take something to the market before it has really been proven successful.
The federal government has a well-defined system for investing in key applied R&D sectors – through its network of national labs and a number of federal agencies that fund key research (such as the National Science Foundation). These investments are focused on the areas of the physical sciences and life sciences.
We think the field of workforce development is a field where a national applied R&D function could have a potentially large impact on economic productivity and national competitiveness…:”
Cruise on over to nuPOLIS, have a look, and share your thoughts on this important innovation.